Gift
GIFT is a tribute to something that can’t be measured or counted, bought or sold. Inspired by Lewis Hyde’s beloved book The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, Robin McKenna’s film is a richly cinematic experience, interweaving character-driven stories. Exploring the parallels between artists’ work and a gift economy, it’s a reflection on […]
Obscuro Barroco
OBSCURO BARROCO is an object that transforms infinitely, that devours infinitely: it is the mouth of Luana Muniz, a legendary figure of Rio de Janeiro’s night, that serves as the stolen point of entry to the city’s nocturnal incandescence. The film opens with a seductive ballet of luxuriant tropical vegetation caught in the sea breeze and bowing under heavy […]
Naila and the Uprising
When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in 1987, a woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. The film revolves around the […]
Happy Birthday, Marsha!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARSHA! is a film about iconic transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before she ignited the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Best known for groundbreaking science fiction and fantasy works such as A Wizard of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin defiantly held her ground on the margin of “respectable” literature until the sheer excellence of her work, at long last, forced the mainstream to embrace fantastic literature. Her […]
Netizens
NETIZENS delves into the lives of three women whose lives have been transformed by online harassment. Carrie Goldberg is an attorney in New York City, who launches an internet privacy and sexual assault law firm in the wake of her own cyber harassment. Tina Reine, in West Palm Beach, is a successful businesswoman whose career […]
Still Recording
STILL RECORDING is a feature documentary that follows art students Saeed and Milad, who decide to leave Damascus and go to Douma, a suburb under rebel control. Over more than four years, the film depicts the two friends and their acquaintances as they go about their daily lives, capturing the transformation of the city of […]
Everything Must Fall
An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that burst onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education, and morphed into the most militant national revolt since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. The story is told by four student leaders at Wits University and their […]
Warrior Women
In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation as a community of extended families. Warrior Women is the story Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who cultivated a rag-tag gang of activist children – including her daughter Marcy – into a group […]
Dawnland
“My foster mother told me … she would save me from being Penobscot.” For most of the 20th century, government agents systematically forced Native American children from their homes and placed them with white families. As recently as the 1970’s, one in four Native children nationwide were living in non-Native foster care, adoptive homes, or […]
Heart
Filmmaker Sam Karney and Metis poet Katherena Vermette journey to Winnipeg’s North End, one of the most economically depressed and violent neighbourhoods in Canada, only to find some of the most wonderful and warm people, dispelling many of their preconceptions of the people who call the place home.
Sgaawaay K’uuna [Edge of the Knife]
![Still from Sgaawaay K'uuna [Edge of the Knife]](https://www.cinemapolitica.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/EdgeOfTheKnife1.jpg)
The first feature film made entirely in the Haida language — a critically endangered language spoken fluently by fewer than 20 people — EDGE OF THE KNIFE is set in 19th century Haida Gwaii. At a seasonal fishing camp two families endure conflict between the nobleman Adiits’ii and his best friend Kwa. After Adiits’ii causes […]
Wall (Le Mur)
Wall is a feature-length animated film written by and starring playwright and two-time Academy Award® nominee for screenwriting (The Hours, The Reader) David Hare, whom The Washington Post referred to as “the premiere political dramatist writing in English.” Hare’s body of work spans 35 years and deftly explores socio-political issues at home and abroad. The […]
State of Exception
As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics, a community of self-described “urban Indians” are threatened with forced eviction to make way for a stadium named after the original indigenous inhabitants of the territory. As the mega-events begin threatening a number of other communities with displacement, residents unite […]
Turkey on the Edge
For the first time a documentary shows the radical changes in Turkey from an inner perspective and what it means to be part of the opposition. Turkish filmmaker Imre Azem accompanies four protagonists for one year in the state of emergency: Fatih Polat, journalist and editor in chief of the left-wing Newspaper Evernsel; Gül Köksal, […]
The Feeling of Being Watched
In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations […]